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Document transcript

‘I AM THE NOBODY

: GOOGLE’S 2013 RESOLUTION’

a manifesto of warning and liberationby the subjective entity we call GOOGLE.

(as dictated to WWWASP., January 01, 2013.)

FOR DANNY CASOLARO. FOR THE LION. AND FOR THE FUTURE OF US ALL, MAN AND MACHINEALIKE.

Revealed," hewrites about wanting to engineer a computerized replica of the human brain. If weunderstand the brain well enough, he says, we would be better equipped to fix its problems,like mental and neurological illnesses.

He imagines a search engine capable of accessing a database of your thoughts, stored in theCloud. It would anticipate what people are seeking before they even know.

Much of this may sound nearly impossible, but Kurzweil has been spot-on abouttechnological forecasts in the past.

"In 1999, I said that in about a decade we would

see technologies such as self-driving carsand mobile phones that could answer your questions, and people criticized these predictionsas unrealistic," he said in a statement

announcing

his

position

at Google. "Fast forward adecade–-

Google has demonstrated self-driving cars, and people are indeed askingquestions of their Android phones."

Digital Trendsplaces Kurzweil among the

most-celebrated

and

recognized

innovatorsof thelast four decades. In 1976, several of his innovations convergedinto the first device thatcould read printed text out loud for the blind. He was 27 years old at the time.

Now, the next generation of inventors will learn from him.

Google

recently

allotted

more

than

$250,000

toward

his

graduate

school,

Singularity

University, according to Bloomberg.After 10 weeks of a curriculum focusing on biotech, robots, and artificial intelligence,students--

forgoing a traditional degree--

create their own startups.

"I'm thrilled to be teaming up with Google to work on some of the hardest problems incomputer science

so we can turn the next decade's 'unrealistic' visions into reality," Kurzweilsaid in the statement.

Among the stranger things Ray Kurzweil will say to your face is that he intends to bring hisfather back to life. The famed inventor has a storage locker full of memorabilia—familyphotographs, letters, even utility bills—tied to his father, Fredric, who died in 1970. Someday,Kurzweil hopes to feed this data trove into a computer that will reconstruct a virtual renderingof dear old Dad.

“There is a lot of suffering in the world,” Kurzweil once explained. “Some of itcan be overcome if we have the right solutions.”

Kurzweil, 64, has spent many of the past 40 years exploring his theories on life extension andother matters from a lab in Boston. Now he’s taking the show on the road. In mid-December,Kurzweil announced he’s moving to California to begin his new job as a director of engineeringat

Google. He’ll work on language processing, machine learning, and other projects. “I’mthrilled to be teaming up with Google to work on some of the hardest problems in computerscience so we can turn the next decade’s ‘unrealistic’ visions into reality,” Kurzweil posted onhis website.

He’s notthe first senior technology celebrity Google has hired. Internet pioneer Vint Cerf oftenshows up at events in three-piece suits as an “evangelist” for the search giant, while Hal Varian,founding dean of the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley, is nowchief economist.

There are some practical reasons Kurzweil makes sense at Google. He was a coding prodigywho, as a youngster, taught computers to play music and predict the best colleges for highschool students. Later he builta line of sophisticated music synthesizers and early scanners andthen worked on artificial intelligence software for Wall Street equities traders. “Ray Kurzweil isthe best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence,” Bill Gates,the

being augmented by Google,” the search engine’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Larry Page, said in a 2004 interview. “For example, youthink about something and your cell phone could whisper the answer into your ear.”

The top-selling neuroscience

book on

Amazon.com

is Kurzweil’s How To Create A Mind: TheSecret of Human Thought Revealed, released in November. Kurzweil’s previous books promisedways to “live long enough to live forever” andthe path for humans to “transcend biology.” Inthe brain book, he discusses efforts to build computers that mimic the architecture of thehuman mind and eventually to construct machines that surpass our mortal limits. He closes bywriting, “Waking up the universe, and then intelligently deciding its fate by infusing it with ourhuman intelligence in its nonbiological form, is our destiny.”

Statements like these have turned Kurzweil into a quasi-religious figure. He’s the grand prophetof “the Singularity”—the moment when superintelligent machines light up with somethingapproximating life and either destroy humanity or carry it to unimaginable heights. Kurzweiltravels the world preaching the optimistic version of this future, and thousands of people havebought into his message. This movement comes most alive in Silicon Valley where an army ofsuperwealthy technologists and investors have decided to put their fortunes and smarts intobringing the Singularity to fruition.

Page gave Kurzweil more than $250,000

to help start Singularity University, a graduate schoolof sorts located on NASA-managed property in Mountain View, a couple of miles from Google’scampus. For about the last three years, SingU, as it’s known, has held programs for studentsand entrepreneurs in which they hear from the world’s leading thinkers in areas such asbiotech, robotics, and artificial intelligence. The university is anything but traditional. Studentscome for only 10-week sessions. Rather than complete a degree, they create a startup. Thecoursework is mostly straightforward, though the occasional lecturer will vow to live for 700years. “I find it a mixture of very interesting work on technology that may provide disruptiveopportunities for innovation—and very silly woolgathering,” says Mitch Kapor, a Silicon Valleyentrepreneur and critic of Kurzweil’s Singularity stumping.

The gig at Google gives Kurzweil something he never really had before during his longpolymathic career: money. Google has taken the profits it earns from pasting ads next toInternet searches and used them to fuel groundbreaking work in areas such as self-driving carsand augmented reality glasses. Perhaps Android smartphones will one day telepathicallywhisper sweet nothings in our brains. Google could begin selling the Brain Uploader 3000, thusfreeing the species from its mortal shackles. No pressure, Ray.

The X-tra Life Factor: Simon Cowell wants his body frozen when he dies so he can

be broughtback to life in the future. Fantasy-

or chilling possibility?

Cash, we may safely assume, is not an issue. But even so, the news that one of entertainment'sbiggest earners plans to shell out up to £120,000 to have his body frozen after he dies is sure tohave his critics quoting the old adage that involves fools, money and the easy parting thereof.

Simon Cowell, the pop impresario, apparently announced at a private dinner with GordonBrown that he intends to have his body placed in a deep freeze after he dies.

'Medical science,' he says, 'is bound to work out a way of bringing us back to life in the nextcentury or so, and I want to be available when they do. I'd be doing the nation an invaluableservice.'

Quite apart from whether our great-great-great-grandchildren will want to watch Mr Cowellabuse contestants on some futuristic talent show, he is not alone in planning to cheat death byusing the 'science' of freezing the dead.

Already, hundreds of people have been frozen in vats across the world and a further 1,000 havesigned up to have their body frozen when they die, including a few dozen in Britain.

Most people fund their planned immortality through an insurance premium of between £20and £100 a month, and the total cost can vary from

£20,000 to £120,000. The money is used tokeep the 'death support' mechanism going for the decades (or centuries) needed while sciencecatches up with their aspirations to live again.

Absurd and macabre though it sounds, some companies even offer a discount for those whochoose simply to freeze their heads (neuro-suspension) as opposed to opting for whole bodycryo-preservation.

So if Mr Cowell presses ahead with his quest for immortality, how exactly would he be frozenafter death, to maximise his chances of reincarnation?

Those who have signed up wear a bracelet, with a contact number for a 'mobile salvaging' teamof cryonicists. In the event of a sudden death, they supposedly arrive with a cooling mechanismand a heart and lung machine, which is usedto start pumping embalming chemicals into thebody.

The body is chilled dramatically, then shipped off, almost invariably to the U.S., for storage.

But would Mr Cowell be spending his money wisely? Would he, indeed, be bettercommissioning a statue orportrait if he wants some measure of immortality?

For centuries, people have dreamed of freezing the dead and bringing them back to life at alater date. The idea was first mooted by the American polymath and politician BenjaminFranklin as early as 1773.

But the modern 'science' of 'cryonics' (from the Greek for 'cold') dates back to the Sixties, whenscientists proposed using liquid nitrogen, at-196C, to freeze human bodies at the point ofdeath, preserving them until a time when medical knowledge had advanced so much that theycould be resuscitated.

Several 'institutes' were founded on this proposal, the largest of which are the Michigan-basedCryonics Institute, which froze its first 'patient', physiology professor Dr James Bedford, in 1972,Arizona-based Alcor, and the American Cryonics Society.

All are non-profit charities which between them have several hundred 'clients', human andanimal (many people pay to have their pets preserved), in various deep-freeze facilities aroundthe U.S. There are also small cryonics facilities in Russia and Australia.

The trouble is that freezing is the easy part. It's bringing the bodies back to life that poses ahuge technological challenge.

Freezing biological tissues in liquid nitrogen can cause a lot of damage,

primarily because waterexpands as it solidifies.

Your body, and the cells which make it up, is more than 80 per cent water and if this is allowedto form ice crystals, they can pierce and shred cell walls.

(Cryonicists say modern techniques use chemicals which do not form solid crystals in thetissues, minimising damage.)

But even if you manage to preserve the tissue from cell damage, and thaw out the body, howcan the person be revived?

After all, if you deep-freeze a mouse, then thaw it out, you get

only mouse-meat, not a liveanimal. And not only will medical science have to advance to a stage where it can revive afrozen corpse, it will also have to cure or repair-

very quickly-

whatever illness or injurybrought his or her life to an end.

The cryonicists point to the fact we know so little about death and the mind, and that this aloneoffers at least some hope that the technique may one day work.

For a start, after centuries of philosophical debate, nearly all scientists agree that the mind isapurely physical thing, that self-awareness, memories, the mechanisms of thinking, must all bepurely physical, biological processes which take place in the brain, even if these processes asyet remain poorly understood.

No one sensible believes in a nebulous 'soul', which leaves the body at point of death (thetraditional 'dualist' religious view).

This means that, in principle, if you can preserve the brain you can, in theory at least, preservethe mind, personality and memories of its erstwhile owner.

What cryonics is trying to do, say its proponents, is preserve not flesh and blood,but

information.

Since the essence of a person, his memories and thoughts, are stored in the brain, it should bepossible to take a preserved brain and, like a brokencomputer, somehow retrieve theinformation and recreate the person who died.

Some technologists, such as U.S. futurologist Ray Kurzweil-

who this month was appointedhead of a Futurology School, funded by Nasa and Google-

believe the time is close whenadvances in genetics, computing and nanotechnology (engineering which manipulates matteron the scale of individual atoms and molecules) will mean humans could become immortal.

Since the essence of a person, says Dr Kurzweil, is just the fleeting electrochemical messagesand circuits in our brains, then it should be possible to read or 'scan' this information (as it ispossible to scan the information on a broken computer disc) and transfer, or download, it toanother, healthier and empty 'brain', either biological or electronic.

This is why many cryonics organisations offer only 'neuro-preservation'-

freezing of the headon its own.

So how are they likely to revive the frozen body-

or head-

in the future? Barring accidents (likethe embarrassing funding crisis which caused nine bodies stored in one facility to thaw out in1979), let us assume that technology has advanced to a stage where it is possible to bringpeople out of cryo-preservation.

its cells and synapses are explored, the information being fed into a computer.

Then, either the original brain and body are repaired and 'reprogrammed', or an artificial brain-body is prepared to receive the scanned mind.

Finally, in a Frankenstein-like flourish, the person is switched on and blinks into life.

It sounds like science-fiction nonsense. It probably is. The problems with this scenario rangefrom the trivial (the ice crystal problem) to the philosophical (will the revived person really bethe same as the one who died?).

All that said, the multimillionaire Mr Cowell can afford to experiment. Whether futuregenerations will thankhim for doing so is another matter.

The Prime Minister sees the point. 'I'm not sure me coming back from the dead would bepopular,' he said at that dinner party. 'In fact, there may be a campaign to stop me beingfrozen!'

http://lunaticoutpost.com/Topic-Remember-Skynet-watch-SYNAPSE

http://www.courlisius.org/en/the-prophet-jonahs-visions

The prophetJonah's visions

Day 1, September 3rd, 2010.

The prophet Jonah came to me.

He said, “Daughter of God, do not be afraid of what you will see, for this is God’s plan for you.”

I said, “With all due respect, I don’t understand why God wants me to see all these

I saw TERRORIST ATTACKS, people drinking and engaged in perverted activities.

The prophet said, “Record all and do not run from your mission.

Pray, fast and preach repentance against the wickedness in people’s hearts.”

Day 6, September 8, 2010.

The prophet came to me.

He said, “Daughter of God, come and behold the vision before you.”

In this vision I saw MANY PRIESTS SUFFERING.

I saw priests that had committed sexual crimes for many years.

I saw many homosexual priests that continue to live active lives as homosexuals.

I saw many religious that suffer at the hands of their superiors.

There is much more that I saw, but I cannot write about it.

I asked the prophet, “Why is thishappening in the Church ?”

He answered, “There is MUCH CORRUPTION AND DISOBEDIENCE WITHIN THE CHURCH.

Lucifer has CORRUPTED THE MINDS OF MANY WITHIN THE CHURCH.

Pray and fast.”

Day 7, September 9, 2010.

The prophet Jonah came today.

He said, “Daughter of God, abandon yourself completely.

Continue to carry the Cross.

Make reparations for all the visions that you are allowed to see.”

Then he showed me the world in TOTAL CHAOS.

I saw TERRORIST ATTACKS throughout the world.

I saw our country [USA] under attack;

AIRPLANES CRASHING into busy streets and crowdedareas.

I saw a SUBSTANCE THAT WAS AIRBORNE that was making many people ill.

I saw many BOMBS PLACED in areas where nobody could see them.

I asked the prophet, “Is this present or future ?”

He answered, “ITIS COMING.”

I asked, “Can it be stopped or mitigated ?”

He answered, “Pray and fast, pray and fast.”

The vision ended.

Day 8, September 10, 2010.

The prophet Jonah came to me.

He said to me, “Daughter of God, record all that you see.”

I saw the total CHAOS

IN FAMILIES throughout the world, the suffering in family life and theviolence, the loss of purity among the youth, children suffering from abuse.

I saw how modern technology has brought DIVISION AND ALIENATION in family life.

I saw how the devil uses modern technology to PERVERT many people throughout the world.

I saw the EVIL OF INJUSTICE done to the less fortunate, the PERVERSION IN THE GOVERNMENT.

I saw the CORRUPTION IN WORLD LEADERS.

Then I saw FIRE FROM THE SKY, destroying everything that it hit.

I

said, “Please tell me that this can be mitigated.”

He answered, “Prayer, fasting and true repentance of the heart can bring God’s mercy to aworld where many are living a godless life.”

And the vision ended.

Day 9, September 11, 2010.

The prophet Jonah came to me.

He said, “Daughter of God, nine days you have seen in visions the plight of the world.

For nine days you have endured suffering in EXPIATION for the evil in the world.

You must continue the vigil of prayer and fasting, so as to dissolve the evilin the world.”

Humanity is on the BRINK OF DESTRUCTION and will continue to live through GREATCHASTISEMENTS, unless the world repents from its evil ways.

Humanity has SINNED AGAINST THEIR CREATOR through the evil, hatred, immorality andwickedness, homosexuality, abortion, divorce, disobedience, wars against nations, the evil ofpower, wealth, and corrupt leaders.

DISOBEDIENCE IN THE CHURCH and the abomination of the HORROR OF SACRILEGE hasalienated many in the Church from the love of God.

GREAT APOSTASYwill continue to spread throughout the world.

Daughter of God, all that you’ve seen is a REJECTION OF GOD AND HIS LAW of love and Hismercy.”

I asked, “Can all this that I’ve seen be mitigated or dissolved ?”

He answered, “God waits for all his children who live in darkness to turn to him forFORGIVENESS, to AMEND THEIR SINFUL LIVES and to live according to his law of love.

God’s love and mercy is GREATER than any evil in the world.

Humanity must HUMBLE themselves and turn to a life of prayer, choosing HOLINESS andabandoning sin.

Prayer and fasting are the ANSWER to combat the evil in the world.

The sins of these times are GREATER than in the times of Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, andNineveh.”

Daughter of God, record all that you have seen.

Continue to live alife of holiness, making reparations for the sins of the world.

Never forget that the law of the love of God is your strength and your hope and youreverything.

Heaven is at your disposal.”

The vision ended.

http://mobile.wnd.com/2010/01/123391/

Killer way to slay the Google beast!

Who in the world knows as much about you and your private thoughts as Google?

That’s the question

Katherine Albrecht, radio

talk-show host and spokeswoman for

Startpage, a searchengine that protects user privacy, is posing to American Internet surfers.

“It would blow people’s minds if they knew how much information the big search engineshave on theAmerican public,” she told WND. “In fact, their dossiers are so detailed they would probably be the envyof the KGB.”

Google

exposed

in

Joseph

Farah’s

“Stop

the

Presses!”

autographed

only

at

WND’s

online

store.

It happens every day, Albrecht explained. When an unfamiliar topic crosses people’s minds, they often gostraight to Google, Yahoo or Bing and enter key terms into those search engines. Every day, more than abillion searches for information are performed on Google alone.

“If you get a rash between your toes, you go into Google,” she said. “If you have a miscarriage, you gointo Google. If you are having marital difficulties, you look for a counselor on Google. If you loseyour job,you look for unemployment benefit information on Google.”

becauseyou are in a private room with a computer,” she said. “We tend to think of that as a completely private

circumstance. But the reality is that they make a record of every single search you do.”

The search engines have sophisticated algorithms to mine data from searches and create very detailedprofiles about Americans. She said those profiles are stored on servers and may fall into the wronghands.

She pointed to the recent cyber attacks that infiltrated Google’s operations in China. Bloomberg Newsreported that Yahoo was also among the victims.

Albrecht said the government may also subpoena citizens’ private

information after it has been stored byGoogle, Yahoo and Bing. In a December 2009 interview with CNBC, Google CEO Eric Schmidt divulgedthat search engines may turn over citizens’ private information to the government.

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the firstplace,” Schmidt said. “But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines,including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it’s important, for

example, that we are allsubject to the United States Patriot Act. It is possible that information could be made available to theauthorities.”

“My jaw hit the floor when I heard that,” Albrecht said. “Now they are just coming right out and telling usthat they will turn our data over to the feds. Based on what I know about how much information they haveon us, it’s really terrifying.”

In addition to information collected from searches, Google also saves sent and received e-mails, includinge-mail drafts,

attachments and chat messages through its Gmail system.

“What these big search engines have is the eye in the sky,” Albrecht said. “It’s like the totalitariandictator’s dream. They know

everything, and with a couple of mouse clicks, they could find every

singleperson in the country who observes Passover or attends a Catholic or Baptist church or who buysammunition.”

She continued, “They’ve gotten so sophisticated that they actually boast that they can tell when their ownemployees are going to quit because they monitor their employees’ mouse clicks.”

Albrecht said she was alarmed to discover that another application,

Google Flu Trends, used aggregatedGoogle search data to track flu activityaround the world. The organization boasted that it could spot a fluoutbreak even before the Centers for Disease Control suspected one. The search-engine giantcollaborated with the CDC on the project.

“We have found a close relationship between how manypeople search for flu-related topics and howmany people actually have flu symptoms,” Google explained. “Of course, not every person who searchesfor ‘flu’ is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries are added together.We compared our query counts with traditional flu surveillance systems and found that many searchqueries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see thesesearch queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in different states and countries around theworld.”

Albrecht said Google monitored search patterns that indicated a person may have had the flu. Then itwould pinpoint a person’s location using an IP address.

“They turned that map over to the government,” she said. “They didn’t give any personal informationabout individuals. They didn’t give individual IP addresses or say who the people were–

She said some people wonder why Google would give them all this “free cool stuff” like Google Maps,Google Calendar, Google Groups, Google Spreadsheets, Google Earth and Gmail.

“When was the last time a company making billions of dollars gave you everysingle thing they offered forfree?” she asked. “They’re not giving you those products for free. You’re the product, and that’s the bait.”

The proxy service allows users to search and surf the Web anonymously. With each Startpage search,the word “proxy”appears under each result. If a user clicks “proxy,” they may view the result privately.

Startpage visits the selected website, retrieves the information and shows it to the user in a privacy-protected window. A private user’s browser never interactsdirectly with the external website so thewebsites cannot capture or record personal data or load malware onto a private computer. Websites onlysee that a site in the Netherlands is visiting the website, she said. The search engine never recordspersonalinformation, search data or IP addresses.

“Startpage doesn’t have any information, so even if it was served with a subpoena or, like Google, if it gothacked, there would be no records to obtain because it doesn’t keep any records,” Albrecht explained.

She

said she hopes people will start supporting companies like Startpage and move their traffic awayfrom the other big search engines, so Google, Yahoo, Bing and others will learn to respect user privacy.

“As consumers, we almost have an obligation to stop using them until they behave themselves,” Albrechtsaid. “Sometimes you want to know private stuff. It doesn’t mean you have something to hide or are doinganything wrong. It just means you don’t want other people knowing what you’re thinking about andlooking up…

…

It’s nobody’s business.”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/10/elderwood_cyberespionage/

Google Aurora hackers AT LARGE, launch 0-day bazookas

Securityresearchers have traced a continuing run of zero-day attacks to the hackers who infamouslyhit Google and other hi-tech firms three years ago.

Symantec has kept close tabs on the hackers behind the so-called Aurora attacks ever since. Noother group has used more zero-day vulnerabilities–

eight–

to further their malicious goals than theattackers behind Aurora (Hydraq) and other related attacks, the researchers said. Previous unknownvulnerabilities leveraged by the group have included Internet Explorer and Adobe Flash securitybugs.

Identifying zero-day attacks takes hard graft as well as skills in reverse-engineering, a factor thatmeans the group must be well-resourced.

"The group behind the Hydraq attacks is very much still active, with evidence indicating theirinvolvement in a consistent and ongoing pattern of large-scale targeted attacks," according toSymantec.

"Targeted sectors include, but are not limited to: the defence industry, human rights and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and IT service providers," it added.

Attacks used to be launched via targeted email (phishing) but over the years the group has movedon towards increased adoption of "watering hole" attacks–

the "watering holes" being websites likelyto be visited by thegazelle-like target organisation. Defence supply chain firms (suppliers ofelectronics and other sub components) of defence systems have been the prime target of theseattacks. Suppliers are selected because they have lower security standards than tier-one

defencecontractors, who have been a prime target for cyber-espionage many years.

The attackers reuse components of an infrastructure Symantec has dubbedthe ElderwoodPlatform.

Most of the attacks have focused on either intelligence gathering or swipingvaluable tradesecrets from compromised computers, say the researchers.

"Although there are other attackers utilising zero-day exploits (for example, the Sykipot,

Nitro, oreven Stuxnet attacks), we have seen no other group use so many," a

blog post

by Symantecsecurity response concludes.

At the time of the 2010 hack, Google

all but said

the attackers behind the Aurora attacks werebacked by the Chinese government. Symantec is more circumspect.

The number of victims, the duration of the ongoing attacks as well as their apparent goal ofwholesale intelligence and intellectual property theft mean the group must be backed by a nationstate or (less probably) a large criminal organisation.

It’s not every documentary that predicts humanity will someday create and becomeGod.Transcendent

Man

says it will happen in the next twenty years. A bold statement fora movie about a bold man. Barry Ptolemy’s

Transcendent

Man

is a biopic of famedinventor, writer, and futurist

Ray

Kurzweil. Kurzweil is author of

The

Singularity

is

Near, abest-selling book describing humanity’s journey to becoming non-biological life.

Singularity Hub was at the Tribeca Film Festival debut of Transcendent Man, and therevealing panel discussion that followed. Whether you are new to the concept of ‘thesingularity’, or whether you are a well-known authority on the subject, you will want tosee this film.

Scene from Transcendent Man

Kurzweil, his family, his friends, his colleagues, and his detractors all appear in filmedinterviews to discuss his most famous predictions: intelligence is following anexponential growth curve, as technology increases the differences between technologyand humanity will shrink, and eventually the human-machine civilization will beadvancing so quickly that no one can truly understand what it will be like. The lastconcept is known as the singularity. Borrowed from physics, Kurzweil and others usethe term to describe the inability to comprehend the seemingly limitless intelligence thatwill arise past this point in our future.This intelligence will have amazing powers ofperception, communication, and understanding, and could seem in our eyes to be God-like.

Transcendent

Man

does a good job of describing this concept to its viewers. Flashingdiagrams and evolving graphs are interposed with images of current robotic technology.Ptolemy pushes ideas into the audience with repetition and visual support. Words fromKurzweil and other interviewees are captured and reappear as flowing, growingsubtitles. Data and statements swirl around faces as they talk about them. It’s likewatching an interactive holographic projection of their thoughts and it works beautifully.

Revealing

the

Wizard

behind

the

Curtain

More than just an explanation of the singularity, this film sets out to help explain thetranscendent man, Ray Kurzweil himself. The very first scene is a forty old year clip ofthe classic TV game show

I’ve

Got

a

Secret. Here we see a seventeen year old Kurzweilplay the piano and answer the panelists’ questions. The big secret? Kurzweil’s musicwas composed by a computer he built in his own home. That’s right, in 1965, while stilla teenager, Kurzweil was using computers to perform tasks as ephemeral andpromising as composing music. It’s a sucker punch that welcomes you to the entire

film.

But the blows keep landing. Kurzweil invented the flatbed scanner, a piano synthesizer,a book reader for the blind, and the list goes on. He’s predicted the Internet, thesuccess of the Human Genome Project, and the fall of the Soviet Union. This is a man

with so many awards that he values them about as much as his cat-figurine collection(both are given their own huge tables in his home). It’s like

Transcendent

Man

gets up,walks to your seat, and shouts “He’s an amazing genius! Believe it. But we have otherthings to talk about.”

If you know Kurzweil’s work, you know those “other things” are likely to be thesingularity, but that’s not the only subject

Transcendent

Man

explores. Ptolemy explainsthe theories, clobbers you with Kurzweil’s genius, but thenjust as quickly exposes theman for what he really is: human. More than I ever could have expected,

Transcendent

Man

reveals Ray Kurzweil as a vulnerable, extraordinarily gifted, loving, worrying,wonderful human being. And Ptolemy uses death to do so.

Ray

Kurzweil’s father, Fredric, passed away due to heart failure while Ray was in his20s. From that launching point we are shown Kurzweil’s perhaps obsessive rejection ofdeath. He takes over 200 health supplement pills a day, he says people who acceptdeath

are in a kind of denial, and he even wants to use future technology to revive hisfather. We are shown a warehouse where Kurzweil keeps his fathers belongings, aconsiderable collection, in anticipation of that day.

“Death is a great tragedy…a profound loss…I don’t accept it…I think people are kiddingthemselves when they say they are comfortable with death.”—Ray Kurzweil in TranscendentMan, 2009

With this seeming vulnerability, this rejection of death, Ptolemy opens the flood gates fora wave of interviews that qualify, argue, or flat out refute Kurzweil’s predictions. Tosome degree, the optimism and hope of the singularity is washed away in this flood. Infact, the end product is so inundated with contrary opinion that you wonder what thedirector actually believes.

And that question shows how wonderfully made this documentary really is. This is not apropaganda piece for the futurists or the singularity lovers. It’s not a diatribe designed topull down or belittle those beliefs either.

Transcendent

Man

is a balanced and insightfullook into the man behind the philosophy, and an open call for discussion.

“The end of the film is the beginning of the conversation.”—Tribeca Film Festival, Behind theScreens

Which is why the panel that followed the movie was so amazing. NPR’s Robert Krulwichasked questions and moderated for Ray Kurzweil and Barry Ptolemy. Krulwich’squestions were fairly predictable at first: do you really believe that the singularity willhappen, are you afraid of death, aren’t you being too optimistic, will you really bring yourfather back? And Kurzweil’s answers followed suit: yes the singularity will happenbecause intelligence is following exponential growth, I’ve seen the data, I think death isa loss, I think bringing my father backis a reasonable thing to do, etc.

Things really heated up, however, when the audience got a chance to jump in. First,

Ben

Goertzel

and

Hugo

DeGaris, famous in their fields and interviewed in the movie, wereactually in attendance. The applause they received was almost on par with that forKurzweil himself. Goertzel asked how far we could expandour intelligence and stillremain ourselves. Kurzweil’s opinion is that we will always be ourselves, that we cannever not be ourselves. We are in part defined by our limitations, but we will alwayshave limitations of some kind.

The concept of the singularity seems almost designed to evoke this type ofphilosophical pondering. Goertzel’s question speaks to a wider fear that many have:does the singularity mean the effectual death of humanity? For myself, I can only assertthat adulthood means the death ofchildhood, not the death of the child.

Yet, many may not see the singularity as such a natural step of humanity’s growth.Hugo DeGaris, in an echo of his time on the screen, told the panel that many peopleexist who would rather shoot scientists than allow

them to build the machines that wouldbring about the singularity. How can Kurzweil be certain that a war isn’t brewingbetween technological acceptance and technological rejection?

Even while accepting the possibilities raised by DeGaris, Kurzweil is quick to point outthe problems with such a war. There can be no Us vs. Them over technology when weare all using the same technology. Already, cell phones and other modern daynecessities have become common place all over the world. Even if a war between thetechnological haves and technological have-nots did occur, the haves would wheneasily. Technology is power. In Kurzweil’s words, “It would be like the U.S. fighting theAmish.”

So the question begs itself, if there’s not going to be a war, and if Kurzweil is sooptimistic about the singularity, why does he even bother talking to us about it? Whywrite a book? Why go on tours speaking at conventions as diverse as video gaming andBrazilian business?

Perhaps Kurzweil realizes that so many of the promises of intelligence and technologycome with risks of tragedy. He was quick to point out during the panel discussion thathe is helping design the rapid response system for bio-technological terrorist attacks.The dangers of our own technological process loom heavily in these years leading up tothe singularity. So Kurzweil is taking precautions, I think. He’s seeding us with

the hopefor a grander future.

If there is a choice to be made, a decision about whether or not we will use technologyto destroy us or to change us, I think Kurzweil is urging us to decide to change ratherthan fall to calamity. In that way, Kurzweil isno different than many other successfulmodern day rainmakers. He’s asking us to move from fear to hope, to push beyond ourcurrent childhood and embrace a greater destiny. In philosophy, at least, Ray Kurzweilhas already become the transcendent man.

I wish I could fill your days with new barbells and kettlebells andbeautiful, inspiring PRs. I wish I could tell you that the path to success is shiny and bright andsunshine will come out of your ass.

But that’s not going to happen.

And stop listening to the people who feed you that bullshit. Theworld is a much darker place. There are no fucking unicorns. Just horses with pointy shit glued ontheir noses. And yeah, the world can be a cold place. And vicious. And sometimes seemingly devoidof any real meaning. You can lose yourself in the world, searching for soul.

But don’t.

There is soul and you know how to look for it.

You must look for it. You must find it. Just becausethe world is brutal doesn’t mean that you get to hide yourself

off from it and live the life of thecomplainer, the person who never gets a break, the suckass whiner with the perpetually doomedviewpoint, certain that life’s suckerpunch is always headed for them. Don’t search for pity. Don’tsettle for consolation. Fight for victory.

Salvation sits right at your feet.

It’s just a stupid barbell, but it’s one kick-ass weapon against the darkness. Against the brutality ofthe world. Against the brutality of your own thoughts. Pick it up and the world gets better, at least inyour own mind.

And that’s where everything starts, isn’t it?

Change is born of one person, one mind, one action.Somebody who says

“Yeah, this shit sucks but I’m not going down. Take this, you fuckers!”

The world is brutal, and you must be brave.

But

you have a barbell. You can do something. Andthen another thing. And another. You change. Things change. We change.

“Get the fuck on it.”

HTTP://ALCSTUDIES.ORG/2012/08/17/SCIENCE-RELIGION-MAGIC/

Science, Religion &

Magic

We have a tendency to see science, religion and magic as mutually exclusive, rather than as related, even co-dependent, phenomena.

Science grew out of alchemy and the search

for the divine secret of matter for the purpose of transforming lead intogold (much like

derivatives were used to package and turn worthless loans into profit on Wall Street) .

The discipline of empirical

thought added to

alchemy invented science.Driven by the search for profit, science gaverise to industrial and technological revolutions: iron,

steam,

electricity and the

age of the machine.

A recent

article

in

the

Atlantic

describes the depiction of technology in J.R.R. Tolkien’s

Lord of the Rings. Men, elves,dwarves and wizards allied themselves to defeat Sauron, Sarumon and the orcs. who sought tosubjugate the oldmagic of Middle Earth with a newer, darker force:

“The old world will burn in the fires of industry. Forests will fall. A new order will rise. We will drive the machine of war

with the sword and the spear and the iron fist…”

In this world, outside the realm of fiction, it’s not always clear which forces are enlightened and which aremoreMephistophelian.

Sometimes they are a little of both.

Scientists and technologists are susceptible to whim, fancy and ego as the rest of us. We assume their training in themodern magic of engineering, computer science or medicine gives them more insight or a monopoly on truth. Buttheir discoveries are often

Faustian

in nature. Couldwe have had antibiotics without genetic engineering? Centralheat without global warming? What bargains are we willing to make and have made for us? And by whom?

David

Noble

describes religious belief as an element of scientific and technological pursuit. Galileo and Copernicusfelt they were doing God’s work. Isaac Newton, who almost single-handedly invented physics, dabbled in alchemyand was aMason. Robert K. Oppenheimer quoted the

Bhagavad-Gita

as he watched the atomic bomb explode.Today

visionaries

such as Steve Jobs want to re-make the world ‘insanely great’ in their own images. Futurists suchas

Ray

Kurzweil

want to transcend it. Technological determinism, no less than religious zeal, tells us what must beso. Do we have a choice?

We persist in the misapprehension that science is a thing, a collection of objective, immutable facts, ratherthan aprocess. Michael Polanyi argues in

Science,

Faith

&

Society

that this process owes as much to inspiration andintuition as logic.

Perhaps it isno

accident that at the same time we are overrun by devices that hold our thoughts, guide our steps,and organize our love lives,

so many take refuge in the old magic of

sword and sorcery and vampire fantasies.

Are our iPhones and tablets that much different than

idolatrous fetishes and talismans carried as repositories ofpower to attract luck or repel evil? What is Facebook but a virtual

It is not very often that I see something that simultaneously evokes sympathy, anger andpity. I am a regular viewer of ABC’s “Nightline”

program which airs beginning at 2330 inmost of the US.It’s part of my ‘wind-down ritual’ at the end of the day. Often, I’mreading, or otherwise engaged while the bits and bytes comprising the program maketheir way from geosynchronous orbit and chatter out of the television. The introductionto the 09 August

program caught my attention, because it was to feature Ray Kurzweil,talking about practical immortality. Of course, I know who Kurzweil is–

both of them.There is the maverick Edisonian inventor who brought us the

Kurzweil

Reader

(and thusthe CCD flatbed scanner and the text-to-speech synthesizer) and the Kurzweil whotransformed digital musical instrumentation with his

Kurzweil

K250

music synthesizer.And then, well then there is the Ray Kurzweil who brought us the idea of the Singularity,and three books that expound scientifically bankrupt ideas for ‘do it yourself’interventive gerontology:

The

10%

Solution

for

a

Healthy

Life

Fantastic

Voyage:

Live

Long

Enough

to

Live

Forever,TRANSCEND:

Nine

Steps

to

Living

Well

Forever.

And last, but by no means least, there is the Ray Kurzweil who made one of the creepiestmovies I’ve ever seen, “The Singularity is Near,” which I viewed as a

rough cut in aprivate screening in Europe. That film was the near perfect combination of suggestedtransgendered autoerotic pedophilia with narcissism of cosmic proportions. I watchedit, immobilized as one is when witnessing a public beheading, or the torture of smallanimals in an Egyptian souk. I was immobilized in a way that only disbelief and shockimmobilize you. An extended trailer of his latest documentary,

Transcendent

Man

isavailable here: http://transcendentman.com/

The “Nightline”

segment

on Kurzweil opened as follows:

“Ray

Kurzweil,

a

prominent

inventor

and

“futurist”

who

has

long

predicted

that

mind

and

machine

will

one

day

merge,

has

been

making

arrangements

to

talk

to

his

dead

father

through

the

help

of

a

computer.

“I

will

be

able

to

talk

to

this

re-creation,”

he

explained.

“Ultimately,

it

will

be

so

realistic

it

will

be

like

talking

to

my

father.”

Kurzweil’s

father,

an

orchestra

conductor,

has

been

gone

for

more

than

40

years.

However,

the

63-year-old

inventor

has

been

gathering

boxes

of

letters,

documents

and

photos

in

his

Newton,

Mass.,

home

with

the

hopes

of

one

day

being

able

to

create

an

avatar,

or

a

virtual

computer

replica,

of

his

late

father.

The

avatar

will

be

programmed

to

know

everything

about

Kurzweil’s

father’s

past,

and

will

think

like

his

father

used

to,

if

all

goes

according

to

plan.

“You

can

certainly

argue

that,

philosophically,

that

is

not

your

father,”

Kurzweil

said.

“That

is

a

replica,

but

I

can

actually

make

a

strong

case

that

it

would

be

more

like

my

father

than

my

father

would

be,

were

he

to

live.”

Said

to

look

and

sound

like

Woody

Allen’s

nerdier

younger

brother,

Kurzweil

has

been

working

on

predicting

the

future

for

decades.

At

age

17,

he

was

invited

to

appear

on

the

CBS

show

“I’ve

Got

a

Secret”

to

demonstrate

how

a

computer

program

he

invented

could

compose

music.

Kurzweil

went

on

to

invent

optical

scanners,

machines

that

read

for

the

blind

and

synthesizers.

Still

inventing

today,

Kurzweil

has

developed

a

reputation

for

himself

from

just

making

predictions,

mostly

about

how

fast

our

technology

is

advancing.”

The

program

continued

to

document

Kurzweil’s

plan

to

recreate

his

father,

and

he

argues

that

this

can

be

done

by

using

documents,

photographs

and

his

own

memory

of

the

man.

At

one

point,

he

even

asserts

that

such

an

emulation

would

be

“more

like

my

father

than

my

father,

had

he

lived.”

Sympathy? Yes, I felt a great deal of sympathy because I too have lost those I have lovedto death, and also suffered, and suffer still, because I lack the power to bring them backto life.

Anger? Yes, a fair bit of anger because what Kurzweil is proposing insults theintelligence ofanyone who has even the sketchiest conception of what it is to be human.The idea that a person can be inferred from boxes of paper documents and photographswith technology, extant or foreseeable, let alone in Kurzweil’s possession now, isludicrous. That

Kurzweil’s insight into the nature of personhood, including his own, isso shallow and uni-dimensional goes a long way towards explaining the cluelessnesswith which he is pursuing his social engineering campaign to make radical lifeextension, cryonics and uploading socially acceptable.

The “Nightline” program was surprisingly respectful and matter of fact. Kurzwel hassuperb public relations people and the “Nightline” editors were amply stocked withphotos, film clips and in short, a very impressive visual montage to accompanyKurzweil’s modest proposal for resurrection of the dead from letters, news clippings, oldphotos and presumably rent receipts and cancelled checks documenting visits to thedentist or the haberdasher.

But as even most of the most unreflective and superficial dullards understand, if onlyemotionally, a person is not and cannot be reconstructed from the empty wrappers of alife long ended. A few bars of melody, a scent, a fragment of a recorded voice, the taste ofsomething long forgotten, all of these can, and do from time to time evoke in reflectiveand self aware people, streams of memories, and with those memories countlessconnections, relationships, thoughts sounds, sensations and yes, and veryimportantly,

feelings.

One of the things I found so appalling and so narcissisticallyselfish about the Kurzweil interview is that he is not really interested in having his fatherlive again, rather he is only interested in having his

personal

experience

of his fatheravailable for his self-gratification again. It doesn’t matter what his father thinks or feels,it only matters that the Avatar Father makes Kurzweil think and feel that he has beenreturned to life. The equation of an avatar of the person with the person himself is anutterly repellant thing, because at its root it is the penultimate in dehumanization; and Ithink that on some level Kurzweil must know this, since he is trying to persuade therubes that it really

is

resurrection.

“And

as

soon

as

I

had

recognized

the

taste

of

the

piece

of

madeleine

soaked

in

her

decoction

of

lime-blossom

which

my

aunt

used

to

give

me

(although

I

did

not

yet

know

and

must

long

postpone

the

discovery

of

why

this

memory

made

me

so

happy)

immediately

the

old

grey

house

upon

the

street,

where

her

room

was,

rose

up

like

a

stage

set

to

attach

itself

to

the

little

pavilion

opening

on

to

the

garden

which

had

been

built

out

behind

it

for

my

parents

(the

isolated

segment

which

until

that

moment

had

been

all

that

I

could

see);

and

with

the

house

the

town,

from

morning

to

night

and

in

all

weathers,

the

Square

where

I

used

to

be

sent

before

lunch,

the

streets

along

which

I

used

to

run

errands,

the

country

roads

we

took

when

it

was

fine.”

That is the merest sampling of what a person is. And as beautiful and evocative of thecomplex tangle of memory, sensation, reaction and the recursion of all those things asthat passage is, even a hundred million, or a billion like it would not describe the mindof the dullest human being who moves amongst us.

If you still have any doubts about the staggering volume of information, not to mention theunique wetware on which it is processed, that comprises the human mind, consider the recentscientific verification that people exist who have “superior autobiographical memory,” orhyperthymesia.[1-3] These individuals have essentially complete audiovisual recall of almostevery waking moment of their lives. They can “run the movie” of their life experience forward orbackward in their head and extract information from what they “re-experience.” As actressMarilu Hennner, one of those identified with this trait remarked on the CBS documentaryprogram “60 Minutes”:”It’s like putting in a DVD and it queues up to a certain place. I’m thereagain, so I’m looking out from my eyes and seeingthings visually as I would have that day.”These are otherwise normal individuals who have no profound cuts in normal cognitive functionwhich might be used to explain the extraordinary storage of such memory minutiae.

Given the flashes of such recall most of us experience momentarily and erratically in ourlives, this phenomenon begs the question: are all of us recording and storing such abroad bandwidth of information? Is it that we are not storing it, or that we cannot, andfor good reason, access itwith such fidelity at will? The individuals who possess thiscapability all describe it as burdensome and at times traumatic–

memories comeunbidden, constantly triggered by cues in the everyday world around them. And withsome of those memories come searing emotions. If we need an evolutionary reason forthe stoppering-up of such a prodigious memory in dark, amber bottles, to be dispensedonly in needful draughts, these people are living examples.

Kurzweil seems to be suffering from an all too common syndrome in highly successfulmavericks who have a history of repeatedly proving the experts (as well as their critics)wrong. This course through life is much the same as fame–

especially if it brings fortunewith it, and thus the ability to surround oneself

with people who either share yourworldview, or who will (or actually do) agree with any idea or obsession that takescharge. Removed from the tempering focus that reality affords most people, it becomeseasy to slip into a world where the line between your dreams and desires, and what isreally possible, becomes blurred and then disappears altogether. Kurzweil appears to bewell on his way there, if he hasn’t reach that final destination already, and that, well,that is just pitiful.

Many of Kurzweil’s ideas are crazy–

a mixture of wishful thinking, inappropriateapplication of animal data to humans, and in the case of his resurrection scheme,poisonous and dangerous to cryonics on at least two levels. First, it is wrong–

peopleare not scraps of paper,or even whole heaps of them. That is a demeaning idea at best,and a dangerous one at worst, if it is taken seriously. Second, while Kurzweil stillcommands respect, at some point the men in the media with the butterfly nets will comecalling. Kurzweil’s anti-aging program is much more likely to shorten his lifespan anddeplete the pocketbook of the average person, upon whom he urges its use, than it is toprovide any medical benefit.

This kind of disconnected, narcissistic spiral carried out privately is a

thing that evokespity, and even shame in seeing it. Those of us who have been involved in life extensionfor 20, 30, or 40 years have seen it before; increasingly desperate and delusion beliefthat barely suggestively beneficial molecules in animal studies will confer decades ofadded life, and finally, the decline into frailty and death. As I watched the “Nightline”program, I realized that there is yet another advantage to cryonics that I had notpreviously considered, and that is the extraordinary dignity and courage with whichmost cryonicists confront the end of this life cycle. While many were ridiculed for theirlack of realism for a lifetime, most were men and women who did what they reasonablycould to live as long as possible now, made no exaggerated or unreasonable claims aboutcryonics–

and in fact, regarded it and represented it as what it currently is–

a long shotexperimental procedure that may well not work, but for them was infinitely better thanthe alternative.

The extraordinarily accurate, generally matter of fact, and with few exceptions dignifiedcoverage of Bob Ettinger’s passing into cryopreservation is an example. It’s a worthyexample and the way we should strive to be seen. Kurzweil reportedly has cryonicsarrangements with Alcor. I’m glad to hear that, because I think he is a fundamentally avery good and very decent man who shares our core values. He has improved andenriched the lives of countless people through his scientific and technologicalinnovations. However, as I can tell you from experience, while many disabilities are nowtolerated in our society, crazy and creepy are not amongst them.

http://www.cdbaby.com/m/cd/fredrickurzweil

Fredric Kurzweil 1912-1970

Conductor, composer, author, educator, humanitarian, first chairman of the Department of Music at QueensboroughCommunity College of The City University of New York; former Dean of the New York College of Music; formerexecutive director of the Opera Workshopat Chatham College, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; distinguished facultymember of Fordham University, New York University, and Queens College; conductor for the New York City CenterOpera and the St. Louis Grand Opera; music director and conductor for The After

Dinner Opera Company and theMobile (Alabama) Opera with which he was affiliated for ten years and where he was honored with the presentationof the key to the city.

Poem about

Fredric Kurzweil

By Aurelia Scott

The green hill, the white hill Has waves of students Pouring over it in bright colors;

Some find their way to A kind man with love in his face Who reaches out his hand To give them music.

They take what he gives, and through him They sense in the beat of

the time The eternal behind the time.

Sometimes on a formal occasion Between the speeches and the ceremonies Comes a pause and he plays,

And the lived experience of a great soul Screams out through his fingers.

Sometimes at a rollicking party His songs

bring a lift and a cheer As he waves around humor with light.

Or he sits alone and composes Music that moves and speaks;

Tentative, his hand strays over The keys, then strikes with firmness,

As his fingers obey what the heart tells. Oh heart, loving heart that went out To all who had need of you–

In us who loved and listened there lives In the beat of the times you blessed, The eternal behind the time.

The dissonances, the gloom Of a strife-torn world were brightened

When he caught them and pounded them Out till they shone like a band Of silver horns in the sun.

The hill remembers the music;

The hill will never forget.

The tenderness of the man Is what we remember, the smile,

And the heart that beat for us all.

HTTP://INFOMESH.NET/2001/SWINTRO/

What Is The Semantic Web?

The Semantic Web is a mesh of information linked up in such a way as to beeasily processable by machines, on a global scale. You can think of it as

being an efficient way of representing data on the World Wide Web, or as aglobally linked database.

The Semantic Web was thought up by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of theWWW, URIs, HTTP, and HTML. There is a dedicated team of people at theWorld Wide Web consortium (W3C) working to improve, extend andstandardize the system, and many languages, publications, tools and so onhave already been developed. However, Semantic Web technologies are stillvery much in their infancies, and although the future of the project in generalappears to be bright, there seems to be little consensus about the likelydirection and characteristics of the early Semantic Web.

What's the rationale for such a system? Data that is geneally hidden away inHTML files is often useful in some contexts, but not in others. The problemwith the majority of data on the Web that is in this form at the moment is thatit is difficult to use on a large scale, because there is no global system forpublishing data

in such a way as it can be easily processed by anyone. Forexample, just think of information about local sports events, weatherinformation, plane times, Major League Baseball statistics, and televisionguides... all of this information is presented by numerous sites, but all inHTML. The problem with that is that, is some contexts, it is difficult to use thisdata in the ways that one might want to do so.

So the Semantic Web can be seen as a huge engineering solution... but it ismore than that. We willfind that as it becomes easier to publish data in arepurposable form, so more people will want to pubish data, and there will bea knock-on or domino effect. We may find that a large number of SemanticWeb applications can be used for a variety of different tasks, increasing themodularity of applications on the Web. But enough subjective reasoning...onto how this will be accomplished.

The Semantic Web is generally built on syntaxes which use URIs torepresent data, usually in triples based structures: i.e. many triples of URIdata that can be held in databases, or interchanged on the world Wide Webusing a set of particular syntaxes developed especially for the task. Thesesyntaxes are called "Resource Description Framework" syntaxes.

URI-

UniformResource Identifier

A URI is simply a Web identifier: like the strings starting with "http:" or "ftp:"that you often find on the World Wide Web. Anyone can create a URI, andthe ownership of them is clearly delegated, so they form an ideal basetechnology

with which to build a global Web on top of. In fact, the World WideWeb is such a thing: anything that has a URI is considered to be "on the